


As The Stars

by DefineNormal



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29441658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefineNormal/pseuds/DefineNormal
Summary: Introspective drabble. Robert and Cora both looked terribly pained by the trouble in the Flintshire marriage. How do they come to terms with their insecurities about their own marriage? Post Christmas Special - no real spoilers. *REPOST from FF.net 12/25/2012*
Relationships: Cora Crawley/Robert Crawley
Kudos: 2





	As The Stars

They sat, as they so often did, side by side.

She attempted to concentrate on her book. He read the same section in the paper several times.

There was an unusual stiffness in the air, as though heavy with unvoiced secrets.

His hand, as it often did, found her knee beneath the duvet, although his touch was different.

It was as though he was convincing himself of her presence, her solidity, and reassuring himself.

Her touch ghosted across the back of his hand, traced his fingers to the knuckle, before coming to rest. She, too, needed assurance.

"They aren't us, you know." Robert spoke at last.

"I know." His wife stayed fixated on the blurred lines of text before her. She did know, but she hadn't always known. Not so long ago, she and her husband witnessed a future not too divorced from this one. When despair had whittled away at the ground beneath them until they stood on nothing but the shifting sands of blame.

"They never could be us." He spoke with a conviction she wasn't entirely sure she felt. She abandoned her book and curled into him, needing the rush of his pulse beneath her.

She thought, it could have been them. In another lifetime. With one wrong turn in their circumstances. It could have done.

There were no words to unravel their distress.

Nearness, perfect synchronicity, was the only answer.

* * *

Her voice waivers and lilts and she chants his name. He is her mantra of immortality. He is proof of her life.

He does not hold her as though she is blown glass, but allows his fingers to mark her flesh.

He is real, he thinks. He is powerful; he is loved. She is his salvation.

The press of flesh is renewal and somewhere along the way, she begins to smile.

When he mutters an oath at the tie on her nightgown, she begins to laugh.

When he slides inside her with purpose, she begins to fall apart.

They have done this many times. In many ways. They have made children. They have made lust. They have made love.

Now they make a promise; they renew a vow.

Stars incandesce behind their lids; it is the rebirth of their small universe.

They, too, will soldier on. Not because it is expected. Not because people like them never give in.

They will continue because they have each other.

And as always, that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little poetical melodrama to go along with the evening's melodrama. Cora and Robert fascinate me x infinity. Probably because it is a rare occasion for a married couple to actually be in love in the complete way these two are. I want to explore that - take it apart, examine it. Romanticize the hell out of it.
> 
> Happy Christmas, my fellow Coberts. Long may we rave. ;)


End file.
